Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Cabinet Meetings Outside London: PR Stunt or Good Idea?

Hazel Blears made a speech this morning in which she seriously suggested that the Cabinet should hold Cabinet meetings in town halls around the country. In a speech to the Social Market Foundation, she said...

Just imagine if the Cabinet meeting took place at the British Legion, Swindon, the Town Hall, Grimsby, or the Victoria Community Centre in Crewe. There is no good reason why not.

Imagine if the meeting was preceded by sessions with Cabinet ministers meeting local people, listening to their concerns, engaging in discussion, local schools getting involved. Interviews for local newspapers and community radio. And no doubt it would have a direct impact on the decisions made.

Last summer, I introduced the idea of cabinet ministers getting back to the floor by spending some time in workplaces, away from the media, doing a real job. I ended up at Tesco's for three days, stacking shelves and on the tills. I won't tell you which one of my colleagues got to be a train driver for the day.

This should become the norm.

Should it? In some ways she is just parroting what David Cameron has already done. The Shadow Cabinet regularly meets outside London. Sceptics will ask why she is suggesting this and say that it's just a PR stunt. Alternatively, she may be onto something. Discuss.

Gimmick! (Even if it were in principal a good idea, and it's not, it came from Hazel Blears, therefore it is meaningless)

I think Hazel should be grateful for the experience shelf-stacking at Tescos. She's going to need a new job after the next election and I suspect this is just about the best paid job in the private sector that she's capable of...

I might spend a week working from a poolside villa somewhere pleasant for a week or two. As it's simply a way of me ensuring that I stay fresh and get to hear what other people want from my products, then I will obviously have no problem paying out of company funds.

What a load of cobblers. They just want even more jollies at our expense.

Aren't Cabinet meetings meant to be confidential? So either that goes by the by (there's no way the public can be forced to keep quiet on what was discussed), or the whole thing is a pointless Big Con(versation) Roadshow

What is the point of these misfits integrating themselves back into society by doing 'real jobs'?They will still presumably be paid their ministrial wedge. Mind you, Gordon loading a dustcart could have some entertainment value.

Classic PR distraction tactics to buy some time for the Gorgon until the summer recess.

Don't even bother wasting time discussing it. If you seriously think the 'cabinet' is going to be influenced by tripping out to Slough or Swindon [!] to listen to what the great unwashed have to say, then you are far too naive for this game..

Just as there is nothing stopping the Cabinet having a meeting outside London there is nothing it brings in benefit. As already pointed out in a comment, Cabinet meetings are not open to the public.

However, if it also involves meeting that long-forgotten group - Real People - then it could be a very helpful grounding.

I just wouldn't bet on anyone not stage managed and vetted for political contentiousness to the point of being the governmental equivalent of a choirboy getting within 100m of a cabinet minister at one of these events.

It's fine for the shadow cabinet, in what is essentially the campaigning part of their roles. But how would such a change improve decision-making in cabinet meetings?It would be a stunt, and the only real consequence would be a massive increase in cost, shipping ministers and civil servants up and down the country, maintaining communications, sweeping for bugs, ensuring the location is secure... the time taken out of ministers' and civil servants' days would not be conducive to good government.When this is the best idea the Government can come up with for re-engaging with the public, you truly know they have run out of steam.

You have to take your hat off to the little chipmunk.. When the sh!t hits the fan, she knows that she is the one who is called upon to go on the box, or chat to the media, or asked to regurgitate whatever cr@ppy 'line' the Number 10 spin machine dream up to 'move the story on'.

And like a trooper she always says yes and goes out to take the flak on behalf of the weedy blokes who would not do anything so mundane and prosaic as to try and distract the attention of the media to clear up the mess they themselves have created.

And why would they, when they have Hazel 'Pooper-Scooper' Blears to do that job so well for them ??

A stunt and a shabby gimmick - nothing more, nothing less. Imagine the scene if the ginger troll had already got this to happen, where would today's cabinet meeting have taken place? Any takers on Crewe town hall?

Whenever a member of this government meets local people, listens to their concerns, and engages in discussion with them, the minister discovers that they don't like what they hear. So they argue with the "local people" and tell them that they need to get the government message across better, or some other platitude. The message from local people is increasingly, "go away".

If the cabinet met out of London it would be an opportunity for local Conservative associations to pack the events and tell the government what it thinks of them. "Bring it on!" as a wee Scots troll once said.

Regulars to the Party Conference may have been to the Disraeli Suite of the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth, which has a hand painted commemoration on wall marking the fact that his Cabinet met in the room.

If I recall correctly they were escaping the rotten stench in Downing Street...

Haven't the police/security forces got enough to do without following Gordo's Travelling Muppet Circus around the country? Who would pay for the logistics? Why dont they all just clear off to Strasbourg/Brussels if they want to do some sight-seeing and then we can have some respite from their incalculable stupidity.

I'm cynical of anything this awful Government does. This has 'stunt' written in big letter all over it. And has Hazel thought this through...the logistical problems of such a, err, stunt. Maybe Hazel and her chums can meet anywhere they want once they've been kicked out of office.

The more I see of that woman, the more inept she appears. I'm afraid this is only a gimmick for distraction purposes. Naturally, the idea will die very soon. Blears is a typical example of a nu-lab apparatchik - plenty of talk, but with little sensible to say.

Good idea when Dave does it, PR stunt when Hazel proposes copying him - again. And if Cabinet meetings became a travelling circus it would also cost a fortune what with the transport costs, catering, 5* hotels, security to protect them from all the people who hate them... It would be another monstrous squandering of tax payers' cash.

Yeah why don't they come round my gaffe and hold a cabinet meeting and i'll pay for the pleasure. Except i won't have Gordon Brown picking his nose round where I live. Oh yeah, btw it's bugged up to the hilt as well. Silly tart.

On September 7th,1921, there was a Cabinet Meeting in Inverness - I think it was in the Town Hall (it may have been in the Castle)

The situation arose because some crises over Ireland hit the Lloyd George or Bonar -Law Government and with a large number of members out on the grouse moors at the beginning of the season, Inverness was the most suitable place.Not a situation nuLab Cabinet Members are likely to be in, I'll admit

The Council Officer, William Bain, passed round a blank sheet of paper which each member signed. This is still in the Council's possession, and a facsimile of it is on display, the original having started to fade"

I think the comments here are pretty much unanimous - what a load of cobblers the Chipmunk's 'idea' is. If that's the best she can come up with, even on a hot (!!) afternoon in may then I think Tesco may turn her down if she applies again for shelf-stacking.

The idea that we are going to be distracted from the main event (Darling's pathetic stand-up in HoC this afternoon, what an utter weed he is) by such a load of b******s is frankly insulting.

Verity, I have long advocated a substantial reduction in the sheer number of idiotic politicians who leech of the poor bloody taxpayer - from town and district councillor right up to MPs, MSPs, AMs and MEPs (actually, cull the entirety of the three last species please). They cost us all a fortune, achieve precisely didlly squat and should find out what it's like to have a real job in the real world - actually producing something that contributes to economic activity. (Most of them probably think economic activity is some kind of sexual preference ...!)

I hate this notion of what constitutes a "real" job, in the "real" world.

How is a train-driver or shelf-stacker any more "real" than a journalist, or an academic or (like me) an IT professional?

Just 'cos someone wears a uniform and earns less than £xx a year doesn't make their views or opinions any more relevant to public life.

Yet politicians spend their lives desparately worried about connecting with "the working man / woman", as though the rest of us who get up each morning and work for a wage are somehow less authentically British than a Tesco checkout operative.

Why choose British Legions, Working Men's Clubs etc? Why not a wine bar in Solihull, or a departmental common room at Bristol Astrophysics Dept.

It's not even as though there are more votes among the great unwashed... presumably though, it's thought these voters are more easily swayed?

A very good idea and should be implemented. It was something we suggested to Tony Blair on a number of occasions during his final term, he could see the merits but it never quite happened. I hope the current PM considers this and introduces it.

It's more of Hazel pursuing a decentralisation agenda, I think (see also the community kitties thing)

This one sounds like it could turn into the X-Factor auditions tour. The cabinet arrives at a different city every week and is faced with a massive queue of people who want to showcase themselves in front of the big wigs...

This sounds like the colossal waste of our money by the European Parliament in decamping from Brussels to Strasbourg to keep the French happy.No doubt cabinet ministers will decide they need us to pay for them to have additional homes near where these meetings take place."sessions with Cabinet ministers meeting local people, listening to their concerns, engaging in discussion, local schools getting involved. Interviews for local newspapers and community radio" - Isn't this the sort of thing that a decent MP would be doing in their constituency anyway?

Idiotic beyond belief, frankly. However, those with long memories will recall PragueTory's campaign to get the Labour party to pay the cameraman who filmed her in Tesco, Hewitt somewhere or other and so on. The final product was showed at the Labour conference. I cannot find the amusing edited lowlights video on Youtube, but Hazel looked less than compos mentis in it.

It's not even original.Nicolas Sarkozy tried this a year ago and quietly dropped it a few months later when TV showed the plane-loads of civil servants arriving in Corsica, being met by a fleet of limos.Dumb!

Bollocks it's a gimmicky stunt from the stunted one. For my sins I used to work as an official on the Regional Affairs Standing Committee. When the option was put that the Committee could meet outside London the few members who regularly attended fell uncharacteristically silent...I and the supporting cast of approaching 20 staff were rather looking forward to the first class travel, minimum 4 star hotels and generous travel and subsistance and overtime rates - all being London based.